At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.
Increasingly critical eyes on the education system advocate blunt instruments like “stronger management”, more top-down management, tighter controls, and simple incentives. This is surprising since such methods are failing the private sector by dispiriting and limiting people’s contribution. So, why should we expect anything different in education?
This is aggravated by the economy. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years. Today, apart from a few core skills we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed in the future.
The consequences are that teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.
Isn’t time to realign administrators, unions, teachers, parents and students? The realignment is from teaching a curriculum more efficiently, to one of inspiring lifelong learning to thrive in a rapidly shifting economy.
The continued high failure rates in implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). See how many are true from your experience
1. Over-Simplification: The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership views .
“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”
2. Re-definition:A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.
“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”
3. Missionary zeal:The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”
“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”
4. Displacement: the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness. It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.
“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”
5. Scapegoating: The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.
“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”
6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.
“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”
7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.
“Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”
8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.
“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”
9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g
“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”
“You can prove anything with statistics”
10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.
“When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”
11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.
“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”
12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.
“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”
Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.
“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
If you think change is expensive, how about failed change?
Instead, how about Focusing Change to Win?
The Cost of Failed Change
Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm.
So, why is this survey important?
Change management’s track record isn’t getting any better and, isn’t likely to, if we don’t do different things. Who says?
Change failure rates continue above 60%
Surveyed executives still say people are the main reason for failed change
World economics are negatively impacting working and commercial relationships
Technology continues to deliver faster, opportunity-rich and competitively challenging solutions that often impact jobs and working relationships.
Change management was never easy, and now is even more challenging. Unfortunately, any consensus on the causes and solutions of failed change remain elusive. Yet, some organizations do manage successful change. This puzzle is what motivated this study and led to this question and our survey:
A Fine Line
What are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?
After analyzing over 6000 contributor comments, there are clearly those that understand this condition and those who do not. They realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities. Unfortunately, this survey confirms other studies. Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things. In a recent study:
“96% of leaders say their current business models are misaligned with emergent realities, unforeseen challenges and changing priorities. Two-thirds say “extensive changes” are required. Yet they also confess they don’t know how to go about fixing what’s no longer delivering sustainable competitive advantage”[1]
Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:
Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
“If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
“People can’t be bothered”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
Getting people focused and committed on implementing a strategy has never been more difficult as von Moltke said:
strategic plans do not survive first contact with the enemy, and hence must be always open to revision.
In today’s competitive environment every action has many reactions that aren’t easily anticipated. This is probably a major factor why 60% of change initiatives fail in North America and why something is going wrong with strategic planning.
One area that many executives either ignore or only pay lip service to are the cynicisms that previous initiatives strategic planning have accumulated in the organizations psyche. Here are some that you ignore at your peril
Crucial to understanding your people, as Peter Senge describes, is identifying where people are on the apathy-commitment continuum. He identifies two areas of personal need that they want satisfied in their working lives:
personal benefit which comes from compensation, benefits, position, recognition, or other non-tangible benefits
personal sense of fulfillment of their life’s purpose, vision, or calling.
Leaders need to grasp how well each person’s attitude and their contribution is met directly by company goals or objectives. Then they can assess where people sit on the apathy/commitment continuum. Any misalignment between personal needs and your strategy will generate unproductive or counterproductive behavior, if not actively managed
The avalanche of data at ever increasing speeds creates greater corporate ADHD. The result is decision making suffers from “24×7 news cycle”thinking where now is better than later. Competitively, it means increased market stress and rapid cycles of wicked problem solving. So, what can we learn about remaining competitive?
It’s 20 years since I produced my Masters Thesis on managing change for competitive success based on Pettigrew & Whipp’s research of the later 80s and 90s. Since that time, strategic planning was reborn in the 1990s. New approaches for strategy focused on growth through mergers/acquisitions and joint ventures, generation of innovative ideas through decentralized strategic efforts within the company, emergent strategy, and the leveraging of core competencies to create strategic intent. By the start of this century the focus shifted to strategic and organizational innovation, including reconciling size with flexibility and responsiveness. New alliances mean cooperative strategies, complexity, changes in commitments of corporate social responsibility, etc. Today’s strategic planning and execution requires new models of leadership, less formal structures, and more commitment to self-direction.
Unfortunately, both strategic planning and implementation’s effectiveness leaves a lot to be desired with 60% of all change initiatives failing. Sydney Finkelstein summarizes areas of most strategic planning failure: launching new ventures, promoting innovation and change, managing mergers and acquisitions and responding to new environmental pressures. So in this era of dramatic change, global alliances, and a variety of environmental pressures, the potential for failure is very real.
This blog looks at what leaders need to consider to avoid being another survey statistic.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the employment compact is fracturing along the lines of manufacturing outsourcing, poor change communication and inconsistent leadership. The bottom-line is that “doing more with less”sounds macho in closeted executive strategy sessions. The reality is that those who get the work done feel the stress of over-work and unabated insecurity is eroding trust in their leaders.
How close are we getting to the “old lie”?
Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.( Translation: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Wilfred Owen – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is great to work your butt off and then a get a pink slip
North Americans grow more cynical of being asked “go the extra mile” with even fewer resources. As a result, change resistance is increasingly more complex and individualistic.
This fracturing eats away at competitiveness. The leadership challenge then is to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their leaders and other functions.
In North America, over the last ten years I have conducted expectation alignment projects in very different organizations like Royal Bank of Canada, Qwest Telecommunications and Turner Construction. In every project, leaders consistently under-estimated the gaps between:
What they expect of their people and what the people actually think is expected of them.
What they think people expect of them and their people actually expect of their leaders
In all projects, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware. As you read on you will see that my findings are disturbingly endorsed on both sides of the Atlantic.
I developed this as a discussion paper for a client’s European Sales Management Effectiveness Project. The interesting perspective is how the issues raised in the early 90′s are still validated by Deliotte’s 2010 survey of 250 Sales VPs. It begs the question:
Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?
1.1. How do you design a good sales compensation plan?
Specifically, a good plan:
Uses performance metrics that drive the company’s overall strategy;
Ensures roles, skills, selling, processes, internal culture, etc. are consistent with the overall sales force strategy
Are mechanically sound ; and
Can be administered efficiently.
Fits for your sales organization?
Can be administered with existing people, processes, data, and technology
(The following is based on Frank Cespedes book Concurrent Marketing, The Management of Major Sales (Neil Rackham) and 2010 Strategic Sales Compensation Survey by Deloitte & Varicent)
1.2. Compensation Hydraulics springs a leak
Since the mid 90’s the great bulk of literature still emphasizes what might be called
“Compensation Hydraulics”: Push this pay lever and get this kind of behavior.
This type of thinking fails to recognize that sales compensation is dependent upon, data analysis, strategy, values and human motivation. Many forget to ask:
How should we pay our customer facing people? (Which inevitably involves a range of business issues?)
(Journal article by George M. De Marco, Byan A. Mccullick; JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Vol. 68, 1997)
I like this article as it challenges some of the more superficial approaches to training sales managers to coach. It is a challenge that so many duck and as I wrote in Quality Sales Managers Matters:
#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.
#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.
#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.
#4 Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)
#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.
The characteristics of coaching expertise, research into coaching effectiveness, coaching expertise, and expert performance in other domains, a profile of expert coaching has emerged. – Five distinct Characteristics
Characteristics of Expert Coaches
1. Extensive, Specialized Knowledge
All around understanding of the internal and external sales environments
2. Organize Knowledge Hierarchically
The ability to store and organize information as learning patterns which allows them to compare idealized performance standards with the present performance of their people.
At its core the experts are superior planners and evaluators. E.g. expert gymnastic coaches used a model to determine and plan for their athletes potential developing short- and long-term goals being set and periodically reset according to the athlete’s progress.
Another study compared 10 expert and 10 novice basketball coaches. The results indicated:
“..experts had more in-depth and detailed planning protocols, with more augmentation, sub goals and anticipated problem statements than novices. They planned practice sessions in bigger chunks, taking into consideration more components of the problem at one time” (p.215).
3. Highly Perceptive & Superior Problem Solvers
Experts are uniquely capable of accurately perceiving stimuli in game situations. They can sort important clues from other “white noise” and then generate superior responses. They can see how all the pieces fit together to help their athletes to plan, diagnose and strategize more effectively. The experts solve problems more methodically
4 Accurately assess and prescribe performance
This positively impacts the quality and quality of coaching during practice. Basketball experts spent 42% of their time in instruction In another study, expert coaches gave significantly more feedback.
Expert coaches are able to detect what people need to know and then find ways of supplying that information.
5. Exhibit Automaticity During Analysis & Instruction
Several studies on coaching effectiveness showed that coaches of less satisfied high school teams often interrupted the flow of practices to instruct, whereas coaches of satisfied teams typically provided instruction as they played.
Commentary of Summitt’s coaching:
“provides succinct and rapid-fire instructive and prescriptive feedback during play”
6 Self-Monitoring Skills
Experts are more self-aware, analytical, evaluative and corrective of their performances. They are driven by the desire to improve their own coaching performance
Developing Expertise in Coaching
Gain More Knowledge
Study successful coaches
Identify the important. Organizational skills are critical to effective coaching. Keep yearly, monthly, personal records
Stay perceptive, recognize problems early and solve them quickly.
Concentration is a must – focus on the task at hand and don’t let yourself be interrupted or distracted. When analyzing a skill performance, focus only on one aspect of the performance, not the whole skill. ”The sooner the coach can analyze skill problems, the sooner the will move to the expert level”
Identify & solve problems in a rapid, complete and correct manner demands skill that continually needs to be developed
Increase short- and long- term Memory – A great distinction between the experts and others “the ability to acquire, retain and apply knowledge”
Make it Automatic – develop practice routines, warm-up drills, pre-game activities
People problems are very varied; they can also be complex. There is no all-embracing theory for
understanding them and no magical formulas guaranteed to solve them. The problem-solver, where people problems are concerned, must be an experimenter. There are, however, a few guidelines which, if observed, will help to save the problem-solver from wasting time and effort on ultimately unprofitable activities.
Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision. It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.
Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word. It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations. It exists to offer a tangible guidance system which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals. Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results. When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.
Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire
This interview structure is designed to help interviewees talk about their principles and core values about leading which guide their behavior at work. In each section, interviewees are asked about their proposals for change and how they should be implemented and then asking why they feel implementing such proposals are necessary. It is this “why” question which is the most important. It is the answers to these “why” questions that particularly should allow comparisons between each interviewee’s guiding principles and values of leading, in specific situations. It should then help us decide how we are going to develop a coherent sales strategy by understanding what people mean by:
“building a rich, engaging purpose”
“creating more effective management processes”
“developing their capabilities and broadening the way they look at the world of work”
This discussion starter gets leaders thinking about leadership and help them move toward consensus before starting a major change initiative. (For more in-depth discussion please go to the Leading in Complexity Blog Series).
A critical issue is helping the team to “walk through” the range of relations they will meet managing change, dealing with the practicalities and intricacies
of people, departments, factions and geographies.
A large part of the task is not just ensuring leaders understand their change environment but that the organization can continue to learn and act on over time.
Unfortunately, between two minds there is often a breeding environment for misunderstanding and distortion. It’s where phraes like “I don’t think we are on the same page”
originates. Many factors influence such distortions. These include:
style and structure of the communication
social climate between the sender and recipient of a message,
integration of the message with other experience and learning
A frequent and often crucial situation in management today is one in which one person is seeking to persuade another to accept proposals for change. This situation commonly occurs when a subordinate presents a case to his or her boss.
Unfortunately, people usually spend a great deal more time and effort in collecting supporting facts and figures than in planning for the face-to-face interaction on which the success of the whole exercise usually depends. Careful consideration of interactive strategy at the planning stage can both assist in the selection of effective arguments and result in more persuasive interactions.
Feature Dumping
This discussion of the issues involved concentrates on persuasion in the boss-subordinate context; but the principles considered apply equally well to any situation in which one person is seeking to gain the co-operation or the consent of another.
Accelerating Complexity places extreme demands on leaders. The leader’s ability to relate, energize, and develop their followers is critical to empower them to act without direction. It’s a competitive imperative and requires a new balance of more effective and affective leadership. It’s the ability to produce results by being affective. That ability to influence people, in the way they think, feel and act is now paramount
As Peter Senge said Leaders “…cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg…”
So, this month I deal with what leaders need to do – the easier bit. Next month, I cover the tougher piece on how leaders need to lead transformationally.
In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Changeby over viewing improving people productivity and it’s connection to gaining people’s commitment.
Why is this so important as we climb out of this recession?
It’s a good question…over the last 15 years the odds of making a successful change in North America haven’t changed appreciably. Two thirds of change initiatives fail, including family businesses trying to pass on their company to the next generation. Number 1 reason executives surveyed said “People”
What is your take on the reasons for such a high failure rate?
The performance challenge is greater than ever. How you rebuild and lead an organization to perform near its potential is even more difficult today.
As Tim Kite of Focus3 Consulting says:
It’s challenging because an organization is the sum of its parts piecemeal improvement doesn’t address the organization’s system. To meet this challenge you need to be really clear on the difference between performance drivers vs. performance indicators. Too many people focus on the numbers and too little on Drivers:
20 Communication Channels to Get Aligned
• Key Drivers produce performance
• Key Indicators only measure performance (even well designed ones)
• You can’t manage indicators only drivers can be managed
There are Five Drivers that cover your business system
• People – Selection, Development & Retention
• Culture – Clarity, Consistency & Connection
• Strategy – Value Proposition, Marketing, Sales Customer Care, Financial Goals
When you align these Five Drivers you need to ensure that:
Culture aligns and motivates people,
Strategy delivers in line with Customers needs,
Systems delivers high quality consistently,
Structure empowers people and smoothes workflow
People Driver recruits, develops and retains the right people.
How do you assess if these drivers are broken or needs repair broken?
Let’s take costs. To manage costs effectively across the Five Drivers you need clarity as to what are Core and Non-Core expenses or to put it another way what directly contributes to Top Line revenue vs. the cost of doing business which only indirectly contributes to revenue
Core Expenses are what drives Top Line Sales Revenue
So, Core and Non-Core Expenses first. You are likely to find functions which are internally misaligned present opportunities for improved productivity. Coupled with this is looking at inefficiencies when functions work collaborate with each other
Consider a company with nine functions, such as Production, Marketing, Finance. How many communications channels? You have 9 functions with 9 communication channels less 9 channels within each Function = 72 Communication Channels
Additionally, within one function say you had 50 people 2450 channels potentially.
As you look at these channels you find inefficiencies. Friction between Finance and Marketing is not unusual. So, what happens to communication flows? Communication reduces and fall back on being formal and response times get slower. We call these Expectation Gaps
Expectations Gaps Are like Pot Holes. Fill them quickly before damage occurs
Expectations are like Potholes
It sounds like they don’t know “who’s on first” and even if they did no one is holding people accountable good starting point?
Exactly. It’s like many poor performing teams at least one of the following will apply:
• Four Team members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
• There was an important job to be done.
• Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
• Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
• Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
• Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
• It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
How expensive is that?
What signs should look for to see if think is going on?
“That’s not what I meant…”
“This is not what I asked for!”
“My colleagues don’t seem to do what I expect…”
“They never tell us the whole story!”
“I can never do anything right!”
“They never send us information; we’re always sending information to them!”
Sound Familiar?
Yes, I know several organizations where those examples would get a lot of nodding. Do you have any idea what misalignment costs?
60%+ of change initiatives fail in North America
70%+ of leaders expectations are
not understood by their people about a major change
In the last 12 years, 2 in 3 failure rate has not changed Harvard (1996) to McKinsey (2009)
Executives surveyed continue to say the number one reason for such failures is PEOPLE. It really goes into the millions and can close businesses. In one survey 134 public companies average cost of failed IT projects was $12.5m. This does not account for the cost to their cultures and people.
What are the human costs of misalignment?
With misalignment the first to go is Trust coupled to a Fear Of Conflict. When these two exist, a Lack of Commitment grows and its partner Avoiding Accountability rears its ugly head. Finally, silos are reinforced, people do what they have always what they have always done and improved performance doesn’t happen. As these dysfunctions grow over time you will find that the 8OOlb Gorilla feeding on what’s left of your enabling culture.
800lb Gorilla of Mislignmenton a rich culture of unstated expectations and assumptions.
How many of these are due to people not being on the same page?
In our projects 70%+ of leaders’ expectations of each other and those implementing a change have not expressed. Apart from unstated expectations, how do you identify poor expectations
The biggest culprits are the expectations are ambiguous, lack specificity which leads to disappointment, failure and bad feelings etc. here’s some typical language that predicts performance improvement failure:
• “Soon…….”
• ASAP
• “Right Away….”
• “I’ll Try To Get To It………”
• “Later….”
• “By The End Of Next Week
So, Practically what can people do about this when they hear language like this?
First get key players get them to articulates and record expectations then apply:
“The three most important rules in creating accountability cultures are:
Specificity, Specificity, Specificity
Dealing with Expectations Gaps
1. Which expectations gaps are barriers to improving performance and reducing expenses?
2. Who do you need to gain agreement from?
3. Once agreed, ask them to tell you what evidence you will see that your expectation has been met?
4. Then, hold them accountable – “Inspect what you expect”
5. Then, what do you think others expect of you that is connected to these gaps?
6. Now, repeat steps 2,3 & 4
Have you done any projects locally where you have helped fill such expectation gaps?
An Alignment Success
Ken Genzink, Genzink Steel tried twice over the last five years to reduce his operational management of the Family Steel Fabrication business. On both occasions he had to reengage to save the business.
• Structural Steel side of the business was losing money due to poor estimating
• Difficulty in retaining skilled people
The Implementation consisted of the following activities:
• Developing a vision for change to reduce dependency on the
• Owner’s day-to-day management.
• Isolate key Alignment Components and their definitions which Ken Genzink saw as crucial to achieving greater market responsiveness and help him devote time to his other businesses
• AlEx™ was then configured specifically for Genzink Steel. AlEx™is an Automated Accountability Tracking tool that identifies expectations gaps and monitors people’s progress in filling them.
Ken now works at another location devoting the time he needs to the other Family businesses. Gross Revenues have steadily increased from $20 to $30m, and
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get PDS working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PDS Group Ltd
Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009). How can your organization succeed? You can succeed by making change personal! Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.
Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?
Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives. Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why. The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!
If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail. Why? If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.
So how do you make change personal?
Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well. Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.
Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change. Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation. This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of those expectations other have of them. This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
Track each expectation’s results. This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion. So, the Accountability Culture is born. The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.
The Expectations Approachmakes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it. We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations. The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.
Where has this approach been used succesfully?
This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).
“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
This month’s topic looks at Competitive Differentiation in the Professional Services Sector. This sector typically includes accountants, lawyers, bankers and financial services, like planners etc. All these professionals offer very similar services due in part to regulations, certifications, disintermediation and the power of technology.
Go to any law firm’s web site like Varnum and Clark Hill, or large consulting firms and they look the same. They apparently have the same mouse trap.
Why did you choose your….attorney, accountant, financial planner etc?
So, how do professionals differentiate themselves?
On the basis of their expertise and their ability to develop Trusted Adviserstatus. David Meister asks: What benefits would you obtain if your clients trusted you more? For example, the more they will:
Treat you as you wish to be treated
Lower the level of stress in your interactions
Be comfortable and allow you to be comfortable
Involve you early on when their issues begin to form, rather than later (Open up)Share more information that helps you to help them, and improves the quality of the service you provide
Be inclined to accept and act on your recommendations
Bring you in on more advanced, complex, strategic issues ( Your are in the board room not waiting in the corridor awaiting instructions)
Refer you to their friends and business acquaintances
What characteristics would you look for in selecting your trusted adviser
Here are some of David Meister’s traits that Trusted Advisers have in common. Clients say they:
Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but take the issues seriously)
Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
Act like a person, not someone in a role
Are reliably on our side, and always seem to have our interests at heart
Don’t try to force things on us
Help us think things through (but emphasize that it’s our decision)
Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly
Don’t pull their punches: we can rely on them to tell us the truth
Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation and let us choose.
Are always honorable: they don’t gossip about others (we trust their values)
Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories and anecdotes (they recognize that few problems are completely unique)
You said he listed “traits” as in a person’s character? So for example the adviser who is not honorable can’t be trained to be more honorable, right?
It’s a good point, in last month’s blog I made the distinction. Candidly, Meister’s list is mixture of Competencies and Traits. “So what?” you must be thinking,” I said, “Bottom line, you hire traits and develop competencies! Remember:
Competency : “The ability to do something successfully or efficiently.” ”Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully:” Trait: “A characteristic or quality of a person.” (They are wired that way
For all intent and purposes professional advisers reading this should focus on what they can learn and develop to be competitive differentiated trusted advisers. But, here is the rub. Developing trust is not well defined. For example, research I did with Linda Marsh into Mortgage Loan Advisers we found that the customers trusted those who used more “Transitional Structuring” WHAT! (Some people call it sign posting). Like,
“We have now covered David’s Trusted Adviser traits and we are now looking at Adviser Competencies…
We and others have identified observable and trainable behaviors that impact those traits that David mentioned like making the client “feel comfortable”. Now, here’s the fundamental point about developing trusted adviser status:
How do you balance helping potential clients feel understood while ensuring they understand the issues and options available?
That’s difficult because if they don’t feel understood they aren’t really going to retain what they are told AND won’t likely see you as a trusted advisor. It takes me back to the most fundamental process of when people make a decision to change. They have to be sufficiently disturbed or concerned about their current condition that they look for a solution that enables them to resolve their negative condition. If Advisors, don’t know how to locate where a client is in this process and help them through at their pace any residual trust will be eroded.
What competencies have you and PDS identified to help develop competitive advisers?
In the world of Professional Services regulations dictate levels of certification – so the expertise playing field is level, for the new client looking for an adviser. So, we at PDS isolate “Competitive Competencies” which:
Make a disproportionate contribution to customer’s perceived value
Are “competitively unique” or superior
Are extendible: providing “gateways to tomorrow’s markets”
The Value of Effective Competencies
Greater objectivity – less biased by the manager’s interpretations of what happened but what actually happened
More Useful – less dependent on the manager’s judgment, more on the Adviser assessment (crucial if they are to learn)
More focus – less overwhelming as it encourages managers to match the feedback to the Adviser’s ability and their willingness to receive it
More quantifiable - greater understanding what of works and what doesn’t under defined conditions and allows people to compare themselves against a standard
More effective – less guess work about how outcomes are achieved. (How you Win and Lose)
It suggests that Advisers needs someone to coach them?
Yes, it is essential. All those firms we have worked with try to get people effective coaching to secure and retain clients from their competition, like, Ernst & Young, who I helped develop their Relationship Management Program, Watson Wyatt, Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase
In your experience, what traps do advisory firms fall into?
To put our recent study in context, most professionals we work with love to do a great job. As one senior adviser said to me“I treat my clients as my children…”
But, being a trusted adviser today is not enough. We surveyed advisers to see how they were competitively differentiating themselves. In summary.
1. Most do not truly understand what a competitive Client strategy is.
2. People don’t understand the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation.
3. They do not understand the difference between preparation and planning.
4. They do not understand the difference between offense and defense
5. Because any strategic plans were not common amongst the troops, the plan is not maintained or advanced.
Can you explain the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation?
Competitive Value Discovery helps you increase value potential. The idea of finding value that Client’s had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. So, we can introduce clients to ideas they may never have thought of and help them see the competition as “not on the ball”. Whether it’s your client or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against the competition. What we have more more control over is what they weigh, how they weigh it. Additionally, we need to plant what the competition plants in the client’s mind. Then, we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities to influence their Decision Guidelines both offensely and defensively – Competitive Differentiation.
“Given the same amount of intelligence… timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity” “The best form of defense is attack.” Karl von Clausewitz
What else did you find out?
1. Their language is predominately about reacting to clients’ needs with no language of competitiveness.
2. No sense of doing things in a relational way but with competitive intent.
3. They see the activity of competing as separate from looking after the client.
4. The idea of decision guidelines and working to putting value behind them is a language that is foreign to them.
5. They don’t have a competitively strategic context for their day to day client interactions.
6. Largely, they have a passive position without having a strategy to extend the services they offer outsourcing.
What did you say to them about these findings?
How much profit are you leaving on the table because you are not managing our relationships with competitive intent?
So why are you not purposely discovering client value that will allow us to “Differentiate the Firm?”
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
It’s a statement of the obvious ….. We live in turbulent times… I got to thinking what are the challenges of leadership in the times we are living in. Some years ago I noted this quote:
“Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of the firm is so hazardous, in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of everyone’s intelligence” (Konosuke Matushita, founder of Matsushita Electric)
It struck a chord…to mobilize everyone’s intelligence… for regular readers you will recognize a theme in our work at PDS…releasing and focusing people is still a crucial ingredient to survival and sustained sucess
So, my focus this month is the Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times
What’s the core to these challenges that leaders face….it’s Bravery…
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. (Omar N Bradley)
The first step “walk and talk – - – the same talk” constantly. Alignment between attitude, philosophy and actions is key! Such consistency is hard to find, particularly since producing a payoff in changeis often more about emotion and intuition than it is about analysis and logic. Where’s the bravery you ask? Try making emotional and intuitive decisions which may or may not be born out by analysis and logic!
Yet I like, Peter Senge’s viewpoint:
“high levels of mastery….leaders cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg and see with one eye”
It’s that outward calm of seeing a swan glide across the water, yet below the water line…furious paddling..
It’s about not losing your head while those around you are running around like chickens with their heads cut off…..what are we going to d!….what are we going to do!
The bravery comes to challenge how your company operates, its implicit beliefs and philosophies (e.g., The unspoken creed…once in automotive always in automotive). Your culture can create its own distractions which interfere with what seems right, intuitive and obvious. Many times, discussing this tension is repressed so that “we don’t take our eye off-the-ball,” or so we don’t offend others. Consequently, leaders often focus on the seemingly “urgent” and let the critical issues slide. They take refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed. These targets rarely support desired behaviors or intuitive outcomes.
Yet there are automotive dependent manufacturers in West Michigan that are wondering how to “keep it shiny side up!”
So in this fog of war, where do leaders look to survival?
If you look at successful companies, they have varied strategies, structures and systems. However, their leaders do have something in common. They share surprisingly consistent philosophies.
These successful leaders have moved away from over reliance on very formal ways of running their organizations (like articulating strategies, building structures and developing systems). They have moved toward using more organic ways of managing (like engaging people in defining a purpose, implementing through necessary and defined processes and developing people).
So what does this point out? It goes to the root of why so many change initiatives fail (60% +) even after overdosing on business re-engineering and other scientific management techniques. Many Leaders manage what is easy to manage (like managing numbers and not people). They’ve been trained in the scientific disciplines. They forget they are managing an “organism.” They dismiss the small and gradual steps associated with real change for grandiose strategies
So, let’s put this into perspective. Successful leaders recognize that an organization’s purpose is more important than short-term outcomes. Why? Outcomes change – their purpose does not! Their focus is on how they can create committed members of a purposeful organization. Putting purpose above outcomes, allowing new improved outcomes to take precedence and promoting different things to be done takes bravery.
Why is bravery so important?
It takes bravery for leaders and executives to address seven critical challenges. Without question, addressing them is about not acquiescing to “legacy tendencies” but about incorporating “what now works” into the development of “tomorrow’s legacies”! Bravery is about doing “different things,” not about making excuses as to why you can’t do different things.
Getting above the white noise of excuses is not for the faint hearted….getting up with clamor of resistances and fear
Where do we start with these challenges? Is there a sequence or are they inter-related?
They are interelated but a logical place to start is:
1. Embedding Purpose
Is your purpose Ill-defined or Conceptual Clear, well articulated & translated?
So, you’ve written and articulated the corporate purpose! But, do the troops actually understand what this means to their everyday behavior and actions? So often the organization states its purpose without regard as to whether or not it has created any ownership in that purpose.
Essential Questions:
How will you gain widespread organizational support for your purpose?
How will you ensure new activities, actions and behaviors invigorate your purpose?
How will you ensure your expectations are aligned with what people assume is expected of them?
2: Removing Distractions
Are your distractions unidentified or well identified and managed?
There are always distractions that deflect an organization from its “appointed” tasks. If these distractions go unidentified, they grow stronger. Distractions don’t just miraculously disappear. The longer they last the more they clog corporate arteries. Executives need to lead the “charge” in identifying and eliminating distractions.
Essential Questions:
How will you convince people to dismiss actions, operations and processes which stimulate doing old things?
How can you eliminate duplicate processes and reports that slow the organization down?
Who will oversee the distraction-elimination process; and, what authority will they have?
I can see how that would help but does this really get over the fog of war that we face today?
Not unless you integrate it with the next challenge…
3: Aligning Organizational Expectations
Are you expectations unstated or defused or well focused & aligned?
Over and over again, employees say, “I wish someone had told me exactly what was expected.” Have you ever considered that others’ assumptions of “what is expected” might be counter productive to your purpose or outcomes? Are people doing what you expect or what they think you expect?
Essential Questions:
What are the key components that reveal your organization’s direction and success?
How will you translate these words into actions, competencies and behaviors that can be managed?
How will you measure the degree of alignment with your purpose, and what evidence of alignment are you looking for?
Doesn’t this demand more from a leader than just stating the facts?
Yes. It’s about lt’s making clearer emotional connections. It’s alarming how one individual can undermine a change simply by being out of touch with intuition and empathy. One of the most overlooked yet common ways leaders fail, albeit unintentionally, is not to express appropriately, candidly and consistently what we feel as well as what we think. This is known as unintentionally ambiguous behavior. It gives mixed messages and next to aggressive behavior, ambiguous behavior can cause the most tension between leaders and others. (Adapted from Robert Cooper’s book, Executive EQ).
What is the context for well focused & aligned exepectations?
4 Creating Differentiation
How vulnerable are you to being seen as “same-o,same-o” or clearly differentiated from your competition?
If you feel like you’re the same in the marketplace, odds are that’s how the customer sees you. As a leader, you are responsible for creating a climate of differentiation.
Essential Questions:
How will you ensure that customer contact people and others connect with one another to develop differentiable approaches?
How will you measure the degree and profitability of differentiation?
How will you leverage differentiation to lead your market place?
I can see how these first four create a platform for success…but how do leaders get this to stick and not just be another “flash in the pan”
5: Coaching
How would you describe the coaching process in your organization…Isolated or Cascaded
We know, we know …. your people coach! The real question is, do your people coach with the right intensity and frequency to replicate successful behaviors? Or, is coaching infrequent, informal and isolated?
Essential Questions:
What will you do as a leader to establish your coaching cascade?
What is the right intensity and frequency of coaching needed under present competitive conditions?
How will you know that coaching is effective?
6: Replicating Success
How reliant are you on using Lagging Indicators as opposed to Leading Indicators?
The words, “best practice” seems to have permeated the corporate world. Your people undoubtedly have their own practices of choice, honed by years of personal experience. Often corporate rewards go to these people rather than to those who demonstrate the “best practices” that everyone can adopt and benefit from.
Essential Questions:
What will your real best practices look like?
How will you tie best practices to behaviors which can be evidenced and replicated without alienating the productive “lone rangers?”
How will you use your “language of leaders” to make managing easier and more measurable?
7: Rewarding Change
To waht extent does your reward system reflect what worked in the past rather then being liagned with your current direction?
If the recognition and reward systems of your company run on the “legacies of past success” it will only encourage doing things differently, not “doing different things!” To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.
It’s like traning people to use the longbow,used in the Middle Ages as a weapon of war.A trained army archer could shoot upwards of ten to twelve arrows in one minute, making him the world’s first “machine gun” in some ways. Today how ever, the fastest rate of fire a 36 barrell Prototype mini gun, and can shoot 1,000,000 rounds per minute
Essential Questions:
What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?
How will you measure and reward those who support your purpose?
How will you “raise the bar” so that over time people demonstrate excellence in the new behaviors?
Where do you go from here?
Ensure that your “walk and talk” are consistent. This relates to your language, how you reward excellence, how you coach and how you react when things go wrong! Bravery means displaying an attitude of distinction.
Create a cascade of conversation and coaching that gets above the “white noise” of legacy…..that’s doing different things!
Align the expectations of the organization. Bravery is found in exposing misalignments and distractions for immediate correction.
Tip of the Blog
Look at your team/colleagues…whose up for a fight
“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words”
(St. Crispen’s Day Speech William Shakespeare, 1599)
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_____________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
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How do you balance helping potential clients feel understood while ensuring they understand the issues and options available?
